The Current Cucurbit Podcast

Dr. Gwyn Beattie, a faculty member at ISU's PLPM Department, walks us through the science behind working with bacteriophages (or phages for short) as potential biocontrol agents and their implications for IPM.

Dr. Ajay Nair, a professor of horticulture at Iowa State University, delves into the potential uses of mesotunnel row covers for non-cucurbit crops. For more information visit Dr. Nair's website: https://www.hort.iastate.edu/directory/ajay-nair/

Sean Murphy and Kellie Damann, research technicians with the Pehtybridge Lab at Cornell University, reflect on their experiences doing research with mesotunnels for cucurbit crops in New York.  For more information visit Dr. Pethybridge's (EVADE) lab website: https://evade.pppmb.cals.cornell.edu/

In the fall of 2021, nine growers from IA, KY, and NY were interviewed to collect their thoughts regarding the use of mesotunnels as an IPM tool for cucurbit crops. Dr. Heather Dantkzer and Kaitlin Diggins wrap up the most interesting findings of these interviews.

Dr. Mark Williams, a horticulturist at the University of Kentucky, discusses the potential for using teff as a living mulch for organic control of weeds under mesotunnels.

John Bell is an organic grower and cattle farmer from Georgetown, Kentucky. John co-manages the sixth-generation Elmwood Stock Farm and in this episode, he shares with us his insight on using mesotunnels for organic cucurbit crops and the challenges faced when managing a 550-acre family farm.

Cost ratio, cost-efficiency ratio, payback time, grower survey…fairly nerdy words if you are not an economist, right? In this episode Dr. Zhang, associate professor with the Economics Department (ISU), walks us through these concepts and the importance of including socio-economic analysis into the science we do in the field.

In this episode, Dr. Iles helps us understand the importance of knowing your enemy. Insect pests have particular life cycles, behaviors, and biological relationships. To provide good insect pest control we need to know their weak points, more so when talking about organic pest management, where insecticide sprays are limited in terms of efficiency and residuality. Two insects are of main interest for our research: cucumber beetles, and squash bugs (if you listened to episode 1 of this series you should know why!).

What is a phage? Is biocontrol a real possibility for controlling diseases in organic production of cucurbit crops? Find this and more in this episode with the renowned ISU bacteriologist Dr. Gwyn Beattie

Dr. Ric Bessin -a long-experienced extension specialist and entomologist from the University of Kentucky- shares his thoughts regarding mesotunnel production systems for cucurbit crops, focusing on the capabilities and challenges that using this type of crop protection brings for growers.

Why do we care about pollination? What are we doing to prevent an unsuccessful pollination? Are insecticides -even organic ones- bad for pollinators? What have they found in Kentucky about the relationship of pollination and mesotunnels? These and much more subjects are covered in this interview with Dr. David Gonthier, entomologist with University of Kentucky.

In this episode (recorded in late 2020) of The Current Cucurbit podcast series, plant pathologist Dr. Sarah Pethybridge (one of the project's co-PI's with Cornell University) talks about her experience doing research on mesotunnels based in Cornell (NY) and plans for 2021.

In this introductory episode of The Current Cucurbit podcast series, Dr. Gleason (project leader) sketches out our research on mesotunnels as an option for organic growers. Part of the challenge for mesotunnels is to stop two devastating diseases: bacterial wilt (caused by Erwinia tracheiphila) and CYVD (cucurbit yellow vine disease, caused by Serratia marcescens). The podcast explains how mesotunnels can meet this challenge. This series can help you decide if mesotunnels make sense for your farm.